Stavros Tassos Replies To Geologist

Geologist,

Although I refrain answering to anonymous letters, I do it because you express your opinion in a legitimate way. Nevertheless I would prefer to address you in person.

Relevant to the issue and the possibility of earthquake prediction, actually there are two aspects: The purely scientific aspect, and the aspect of practical applicability.

As for the scientific aspect anyone who is involved in earthquake and earthquake prediction research knows that the problem of the physics of the earthquake source is not solved yet. On the other hand observation shows that earthquakes require concentration of energy in space and time, and that the earthquake is a quantized phenomenon, i.e., unless the necessary quantity of energy is provided, equivalent to the ~2´10^6 Joules/kg of latent energy the earthquake cannot occur, the same way boiling cannot occur; and the temperature of boiling water is 100 degrees Celsius, no matter the amount of boiling water is 1 gram, 1 kg or 1000 tons. Similarly the intensity of ground motion at the epicentral point is magnitude independent. That being so means that at these boundary conditions the phenomenon is time and space scale independent. It might never occur in a large spatial scale, or the whole process might be completed within seconds, if it does occur; the two extremes being by far the most usual cases. This by no mean means that determinism is lost; it means that as in the unit circle the functions of an angle are absolutely deterministic, all points are equally possible within the limits of the unit circle, the radius of which in the case of mid-term earthquake prediction is ~150 km. In other words an earthquake, as a wave, is a chaotic but not an arbitrary function.

It is also known that there are about 400 precursors, among which radon emissions are probably one of the most promising, along with dilatancy, changes in the electromagnetic field etc. But taking into consideration the previously mentioned deterministic uncertainty (odd as it may sound), it means that you might have this and other precursors and the strong earthquake never occur, or it may occur even within seconds after the detection of these precursors.

Furthermore the mainstream plate tectonics, elastic rebound and static stress context misdirects thought and asks the wrong questions, thus giving the wrong answers, e.g., earthquakes being a result of horizontal motion of plates.

And now we come to the practical applicability aspect of earthquake prediction. Taking for granted that all rules of the scientific method have been followed, and given that the area is more or less well determined if there is a previous earthquake activity (in the case of the L’Aquila earthquake it was an ellipse ~26 km by ~13 km, or so), there is the time scale uncertainty. In all cases the only measure that can be taken is the orderly evacuation of the area, in order to save lives and injuries, which of course is of paramount importance. But, this means the need to accommodate thousands to million of people practically for an unknown period of time.

That requires central planning and a need oriented economy which does not exist in most of the countries, but even if it did exist still there is a problem of scientific credibility. From the social point of view someone might argue that it does not matter if the city is evacuated and the earthquake does not occur. It will be a good exercise. But, what about the economic cost because of the evacuation if the earthquake does not occur, and the economic cost of the destruction which will happen anyway, if the earthquake occurs during the time of the evacuation? Much worse what about if the earthquake happens after the return of the population? Or, if you were unsuccessful couple of times who is going to believe you the third time that might be proved to be successful? Then if someone is doing this warning frequently there is a chance, sometime to be successful. But then is it not like gambling? It is obvious that all that adds to discrediting a possibly very legitimate scientific effort.

This is why my opinion is that no matter how much frustrating and oppressing for a scientist might be, and I know it is, the socially responsible position is first to understand the scientific problem by asking the right questions in order to get the right answers, and then if he/she thinks has the right answers act in cooperation with the proper agencies and authorities in order to take the proper actions. In all cases a scientist must unite his/her voice with the people for good structures, constructed with the basic principle they do not collapse in the case of a local strong earthquake, and demand earthquake preparedness in general.

I hope it is understood that I do not undermine any effort. On the contrary I am trying to protect it from an unwarranted discredit, or accusations for a gambling success.

Stavros Tassos

Stavros Tassos On L'Aquila Earthquake

Dear Brian

I show your post about the synthetic apperture radar interferogram in L'Aquila earthquake where you state: "I'm pretty sure this data shows the Earth growing. However they only provide two numbers (2.8 centimeters and 25 centimeters) and no vectors. Movement, but to where? It would be interesting if they told us what the interferogram data shows:"

Well, if you look carefully in the Science Daily post, which reads: "Each fringe of the interferogram, corresponding to a colour cycle, is equivalent to an Earth surface displacement of 2.8 cm along the satellite direction (the bold letters is by S.T.)." it is clear that this is vertical movement, i.e., uplift.

Now, since there are ~9 fringes, and each fringe represents 2.8 cm along the satellite direction, the total displacement-uplift at the center of a ~26 km by ~13 km dome is ~25 cm, which corresponds to a volume of ~3.3x10^7 m^3 or ~10^11 kg of Excess Mass. So here is your measured earth growth; and this is not theory. It is hard-core modern technology data.

This earthquake or volcano related doming-uplift, the size of which depends on the earthquake magnitude or volcano size, has been observed before, e.g., Izmit earthquake and Mount St Helens volcano.

As for the prediction of the L'Aquila earthquake be a bit cautious. The problem of earthquake prediction is not solved yet. Especially mainsteamers with their plate tectonics, elastic rebound, and static stress myths have a real problem understanding the physics of the earthquake source. This is why it is almost unanimously recognized that the physics of the earthquake source is not known. It follows that it is impossible to deterministically predict a phenomenon when you do not know the cause and effect relationships that govern the phenomenon itself.

Although there are various precursors, among which the increase in radon content, since an earthquake is a quantized phenomenon you never now if and when the necessary quantum-limit will be reached. It might never be reached or it might be reached within seconds. Then even if we have a swarm of small earthquakes, like in L'Aquila, in the 99% of the cases this is not followed by a much stronger earthquake. The real problem with L'Aquila and other earthquake hit areas is the quality of structures, and earthquake preparedness in general, and of course the reasons if they are not good.

Best regards
Stavros

Pseudoscientists Dismiss Accurate Prediction

Reuters: Scientists dismiss prediction of Italy earthquake.

Gioacchino Giuliani is at the center of a debate about the limits of seismology after Italian officials shrugged off his warnings last month that a devastating earthquake in the central Abruzzo region was imminent.

In fact Giuliani, who works at the National Institute of Physics, was even reported to police for spreading panic.

While many Italians are now more than ready to listen to whatever Giuliani has to say, geophysicists in Europe and the United States remain skeptical of his claims to have discovered an effective early-warning system. ...

"We can know when an earthquake is coming," Giuliani said in one of the flurry of interviews he has given to Italian media over the past 24 hours.

"To those who have not believed me, I'll just say that a scientist's dictionary should not contain the word 'impossible'. History has proven that to us."

Shou, Z., Earthquake Clouds: A Reliable Precursor, Science and Utopya, Volume 64, Pages 53-57, Oct 1999

Seismologist Who Predicted Italian Earthquake Was Silenced

Dogma = dead people.

Scientific retardation, censorship, and information suppression at it's finest: Italy muzzled scientist who foresaw quake.

ROME, April 6 (Reuters) - An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing dozens of people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic among the population.

The first tremors in the region were felt in mid-January and continued at regular intervals, creating mounting alarm in the medieval city, about 100 km (60 miles) east of Rome.

Vans with loudspeakers had driven around the town a month ago telling locals to evacuate their houses after seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani predicted a large quake was on the way, prompting the mayor's anger.

Giuliani, who based his forecast on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas, was reported to police for "spreading alarm" and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet.

Italy's Civil Protection agency held a meeting of the Major Risks Committee, grouping scientists charged with assessing such risks, in L'Aquila on March 31 to reassure the townspeople.

"The tremors being felt by the population are part of a typical sequence ... (which is) absolutely normal in a seismic area like the one around L'Aquila," the civil protection agency said in a statement on the eve of that meeting.

"It is useful to underline that it is not in any way possible to predict an earthquake," it said, adding that the agency saw no reason for alarm but was nonetheless effecting "continuous monitoring and attention".

Italian earthquake: anger mounts over ignored warnings.

Giampaolo Giuliani told locals to evacuate their houses and posted a video on YouTube in which he said a build-up of radon gas around the seismically active area of Abruzzo suggested a major earthquake was imminent.

Several tremors had been felt in the medieval city of L'Aquila, around 60 miles east of Rome, from mid-January onwards, and vans with loudspeakers had reportedly driven around the city spreading the warning.

But instead of heeding Mr Giuliani's advice, the local authorities reported him to police for "spreading alarm" and he was told to remove his findings from the internet.

Even after he was proved right, civic leaders effectively dismissed him as a maverick whose accurate prediction was little more than a fluke.

As the row escalated yesterday, the Italian president, Silvio Berlusconi, was among those having to fend off angry questions about whether the area should have been evacuated in the light of the warnings.

Maria Francesco, a survivor of the earthquake who lives in L'Aquila, said: "It's a scandal what's happened. For the past three months there have been regular tremors, and they've been getting stronger and stronger. The authorities were well aware."

The ESF Meeting On Earthquakes

NEW CHALLENGES IN EARTHQUAKE DYNAMICS: OBSERVING AND MODELLING A MULTI-SCALE SYSTEM.

Letter from Stavros T. Tassos; notes from the European Science Foundation Conference. (Posted with permission from the author).

Emphasis (bold) added by me.

Tassos, S.T., The ESF Conference, personal communication, received Nov 11, 2008

In the ESF Conference on ‘New Challenges in Earthquake Dynamics’ in Obergurgl, a small ski resort at 1900 meters altitude, and about 50 km from Innsbruck, Austria, some of the ‘big names’ among the about 100 participants, in the field of seismology presented their work. After the ESF conference I went to Leuven, for a lecture to about 20 PhD students and staff members. As an ‘observer’, but also as an ‘involved participant’ I will try to present the general themes and highlights of these two events, as well as their reaction to my ideas, and my reaction to their ideas.

-- Although the title of the conference was ‘New Challenges in Earthquake Dynamics’, the general framework of plate tectonics and elastic rebound was not challenged. Only my presentation titled ‘the challenge of the cause and effect relationship between faults and earthquakes’ challenged the fundamental assumptions of plate tectonics and elastic rebound.

-- The earthquake dynamics within the mainstream plate tectonics and horizontal movement framework refer to horizontal stress, mostly static, i.e., the one that does not change, or changes very slowly with time, but the horizontal dynamic stress, i.e., the one that changes quickly with time, was also considered and debated. Thus in the conventional framework rocks are an elastic medium, at least partially, and static stress changes along future fault planes produce elastic strain accumulation, i.e., bending, frictional sliding, then rupture, and finally an earthquake.

-- My thesis is that rocks are a plastic medium, i.e., they cannot accumulate elastic strain through bending, and an earthquake is the primary elastic mandatory effect of a sufficient dynamic stress, as in free-fall, from a height of the order of 10^-5 to 10^-2 m, that forces an otherwise inelastic medium to respond momentarily elastically, and a fault is the secondary possible post-seismic inelastic effect if the stress is sufficiently high to cause rupture. In other words I concentrate on understanding, and proposing a comprehensive and physically possible deterministic model of the physics of the earthquake source, and not on statistical modeling.

-- Within again the mainstream framework the validity of statistical models was discussed and debated. In one case an invited speaker presented the case of nine (9) different models that all fitted the data from a particular earthquake very well. It is obvious that most likely neither one of them corresponds to the physical actuality and all are mental artifacts. In all cases most of the work presented was on statistical models and on how static stress accumulates and transfers, and not about the physics of the earthquake source, which is still unknown as it was unanimously recognized.

-- The deadlock of the mainstream approach was shown on several occasions. I do not mention names, first because the views expressed by most if not all speakers more or less reflect the general feeling, and second because my intention is only to discuss and criticize ideas:

1.One of the key speakers presented his statistical model on how aftershocks can be triggered by either static or dynamic horizontal stress transfer from the main-shock. My question was: OK let us accept that the aftershocks were triggered by the main shock, but then what triggered the main-shock? Because if the laws of nature are the same regardless of frame of reference, as they are, and your model corresponds to the physical actuality the main-shock should be triggered by an even stronger, but unknown shock His answer was “I do not know. I have only made a statistical model about aftershocks”. I think this is one of the main weaknesses of the main-stream way of thinking. Isolate a case and build ad-hoc mathematically perfect statistical models, which nevertheless usually contradict other ad-hoc models, and most likely have nothing to do with the physical actuality.

2.On another occasion a speaker presented an interesting theoretical and experimental work on the effect of fractured rock on seismic wave velocity. Making also a statement, I asked him, that the real issue was if fracturing could produce seismic waves, and if he had done any experiment on that. His answer was that he had not done any experiment on that, but others had done. But, all those who have experimented with rock rupture under high confining pressure have only recorded sound waves, the speed of which is more than one order of magnitude lower, of the order of 340 m/sec, than the speed of seismic waves, and of course they are transmitted in the air, not in solid rock with about 10^11 Pa rigidity. On the contrary as it was shown experimentally with projectile impacts by Freund (2002, 2003), at 1.45 km.s^-1 impact velocity, P and S waves propagating at ~6 and 3.4 km.s^-1, respectively, were generated that soon faded away within 0.2 ms after impact. At 4.45 km.s^-1 impact velocity fissures began to form 2 ms after impact, i.e., ten times later in time after the seismic waves faded away, and at 5.64 km.s^-1 the block ruptured into three segments along the formerly formed fissures. Thus the dynamic stress had two effects; a primary and a secondary. The primary is mandatory and co-seismic, and refers to the transient elastic response of an otherwise non-elastic rock block, and the generation of seismic waves. The secondary is possible and post-seismic, and involves inelastic slip and the generation of a fault, and occurs there and when the rock’s strength has been exceeded to the degree to cause rupture, and not only creep or slip.

3.Nevertheless few scientists, especially the younger ones but not only, in their private discussions with me expressed a view which could be summed up as “you got a point”.

4.On the overall, the reaction of the majority to my proposition and my reaction to their reaction in both the ESF conference and Leuven University is contained in the e-mails exchanged by Prof. Rudy Swennen, at Leuven University and myself after my talk there. They are as follows: «Dear Stavros, Thank you once again for the nice presentation. Your presentation certainly stimulated some of the discussion in my department, however most scientists are very sceptical about most of your ideas. Kind regards, Rudy», and my reply: «Dear Rudy, It was my pleasure to meet you again and to present my ideas to your department. The reaction of your colleagues is the expected one, and more or less typical of geological audiences, whereas the engineering audiences are more receptive. Of course I insist on my ideas, because I did not hear any scientific objection, for example about the earth's interior getting more rigid as depth increases, because otherwise the observed seismic wave velocity increase with depth cannot be explained. If this is a fact, as I think observation and logic indicate it is, the implications are unavoidable. For one thing the ambient temperatures in the mantle cannot be high, and more so increase with depth. Therefore although I can understand the psychological reaction because I put under question literally all the fundamental assumptions and notions of mainstream science, I cannot consider it equivalent to a scientific argument. I try to come up with a comprehensive set of ideas so that there is no need to adhere to ad-hoc interpretations that usually contradict each other, for example treat the earth as a solid body in seismology, and as a melt in volcanology, in order to explain the various physical phenomena. Nevertheless I really appreciate the opinion of people like you. So since you have my presentation, and of course at your early convenience, study it, reflect on it, and then I would be more than happy to hear your scientific objections, and try to answer them. Thank you again for the invitation to present my provocative ideas to your department. Best regards, Stavros» 

Kanamori, H., The Energy Release in Great Earthquakes, Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 82, Issue B20, p. 2981-2988, 1977

Freund, F.T., et al., Mid-Infrared Luminescence Observed During Rock Deformation, AGU, 2002

Freund, F.T., Rocks That Crackle and Sparkle and Glow: Strange Pre-Earthquake Phenomena, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Volume 17, Number 1, Pages 37-71, 2003

Freund, F.T., et al., Stimulated IR Emission From The Surface of Rocks During Deformation, AGU, Volume 84, Number 46, 2003

Tassos, S.T., and Ford, D.J., An Integrated Alternative Conceptual Framework to Heat Engine Earth, Plate Tectonics, and Elastic Rebound, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Volume 19, Number 1, Pages 43-90, 2005

5 Most Dangerous Earthquake Hotspots Beyond California

Via Wired: 5 Most Dangerous U.S. Earthquake Hot Spots Beyond California and one anomaly.

NEW MADRID:

Most of the major earthquakes in the world occur at tectonic plate boundaries where land masses are colliding or pushing past one another. But in the middle of the country lurks a geological enigma near New Madrid, Missouri, that has produced some of the largest quakes on record for the United States but has yet to be fully explained by scientists.

"It's a big mystery," said geologist Eugene Schweig of the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied the area for 23 years. "New Madrid is about as far from a plate boundary as you can get."

In 1811 and 1812, a swarm of at least three massive earthquakes struck near New Madrid, the largest of which exceeded a magnitude 8 and caused violent, damaging shaking in an area 10 times larger than did the 1906 earthquake. The quake was felt over an area of two million square miles — nearly two-thirds of the country.

During the quakes, the ground rose and fell, trees were bent, deep cracks opened up in the ground, large landslides swept down hills, huge waves washed boats out of the Mississippi River and river banks, islands and sand bars gave way.

Damage was widespread, but only a few people died thanks to the sparse population in what was then the Louisiana Territory but today is near the junction of Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. Were another magnitude 8 earthquake to strike the region today, the toll would be much, much higher.

By analyzing deposits of sand that squirted out of the ground during past major quakes, Schweig and others estimate an average time between earthquakes of 500 years. But earthquakes are impossible to predict, and because scientists aren't even sure why major quakes occur away from plate boundaries, it is even more difficult to estimate a probability for New Madrid.

ESF Research Conference On Earthquakes

Today is the last day of the European Science Foundation Research Conference on Earthquakes: NEW CHALLENGES IN EARTHQUAKE DYNAMICS: OBSERVING AND MODELLING A MULTI-SCALE SYSTEM. I look forward to hearing how things went from our friend Mr. Front Row, Stavros Tassos.

Earthquakes are complex phenomena that result from many intervening processes acting at various spatial and time scales. Recent advances in the observation and modelling of earthquakes have shown that faults interact through elastic stress transfer, but also via the activation of thermal, chemical, hydrological and visco-elastic processes, all occurring in a structurally complex medium. Our perception of the diversity of mechanisms by which faults accommodate stress is changing rapidly with our growing ability to instrument the crust. There is an increasing evidence that these interactions are not restricted to the large scales, typical of strong, destructive earthquakes: (i) recent observations have pointed out that small earthquakes can have as strong an influence on stress redistribution as large earthquakes do. Because of their sizes, these small-scale events are difficult to model. However, their influence can be incorporated as a stochastic term, or the errors involved in ignoring them must be estimated. (ii) Frictional models predict that even large earthquake nucleation could take place in very small zones (e.g., ~ 10 m). This implies that earthquakes are sensitive to mechanical conditions and processes acting at these very small scales, which can be significantly different from those characteristic of the regional tectonics. (iii) During rupture propagation, small-scale variations in pre-stress and / or fault geometry, related to the complexity of fault roughness and fault-zone structure, can control both the rupture speed and its total extent. The aim of this conference is to discuss the recent advances in earthquake physics, in particular relating to earthquake interactions (observations, models). An emphasis will be given on the role of small scale processes and structures in controlling large scale earthquakes and regional seismicity. It will promote new, exploratory discussions on how to reconcile large scale regional models with small-scale controls on stress and seismicity.